Ambitious Romeos looking to differentiate themselves from the typical diamonds, roses, and chocolates are in luck. The Bronx Zoo is offering a one-of-a-kind Valentine’s Day gift — naming a gigantic hissing cockroach after a loved one.

The unique light-hearted gift, though gag-worthy, has deeper meaning to coincide with its shock value. The zoo’s famous Madagascar hissing cockroaches are part of an award-winning Zoo habitat that also includes lemurs, crocodiles, and many other unique species. [Hey! It’s green, too! What’s not to like?]

With a simple online form, each $10 gift comes with a colorful e-card sent to your loved one — or favorite ex-girlfriend, bestowing upon them not only the honor of having a cute, loveable cockroach named after them, but also the satisfaction of knowing that the proceeds will go to the Wildlife Conservation Society, which helps save wildlife and wild places around the world. [Awwwww!]

“They’re extraordinary, which means if you’re cool about bugs, they’re really cool,’ a spokesman for the Wildlife Conservation Society, told FoxNews.com. “We’ve got about 50 or 60 thousand in a hollowed out tree.” [What gal could resist that?]

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are the world’s largest roach species reaching nearly four-inches long. The hissing noise they make is a natural defense mechanism. [Rather like the sound a vase makes in that last moment before it strikes the wall next your head.]

“Nothing says forever like a cockroach,” said Jim Breheny, Senior Vice President for Living Institutions and Director of the Bronx Zoo. “They are resourceful, resilient, and have been around for hundreds of millions of years. [The gift that keeps on giving.]

18 Responses to A Valentine’s Day alternative to teddy bears, chocolates or naming stars

Everyone who reads this even the cockroaches (I knew the ancient reference):

May St. Valentine shower you with hundreds of messages of God’s Love, the original reason for Valentine’s Day. And, if you get gifts, pass them out to the hundreds of lonely people in retirement homes, who are alone and need to be reminded of God’s love.

That is what I have done with Valentine’s decorations and old cards-made them for the shut-in.

This does not have to be a bimbo day just about romance, but a celebration of God’s Love for all of us…

I shall get nothing, as I am old and not married and definitely not dating. Those of us in that position should remember those who seem unloved. Mother Theresa said, after visiting England, that the greatest poverty she ever saw was in Manchester, and here is her quotation: “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

That picture of the cockroach has quite put me off my coffee! Interesting comment about the nickname for a Priest. One French priest I spoke to last year told me that when he used to ride his bike whilst wearing his cassock , children used to shout ‘corbeau’ (crow) after him!

Friend keeps a German Cockroach on her hunting cap. It’s dead, very dead and on a pin, but it’s amazing how many people catch sight of it and try to sidle up to her and whisper, “Hey, there’s a bug on your hat . . . ”

I could one-up her with a Hissing Madagascar Cockroach on my hunting cap . . . my daughter is a wildlife biologist and I bet she could find me one or at least a reasonable facsimile in plastic if real ones would make us fall foul of the DNR . . . .

My Valentine’s gift turned out to be a set of ice crampons for my hiking boots, in case we have any more ice this winter. I wasn’t supposed to see them, they were in the garage on the workbench, but I needed some nails . . . . hubby hasn’t found his Chocolate Largemouth Bass yet (it is well hidden in the laundry room, a place he Never Ever Goes), so I guess I’m ahead in the Valentine Surprise Category . . . .

By the way, am I correct in that the etymology of the nickname for priest started in Rome, because there were so many of them scurrying around the Eternal City in blacks? Is there another story as to the reason for the name? Happy Valentine’s Day sans cockroach.

And, having studied the text in college at least twenty years before I actually saw a real cockroach, Kafka was my primary source of information on the critters, except for a brief look in biology class.

I could not bring myself to look at that picture of the cockroach!
However, I am thoroughly enjoying Father Z’s posts on the topic as well as the comments
@ supertradmum:
I disagree that you will “get nothing”. You can go to Holy Communion and get EVERYTHING – GOD ALONE IS SUFFICIENT.
I just read in some little book by St. Bonaventure and the prologue that said:
I am nothing, I have nothing and I want only Jesus Christ.

May I suggest a much better use of that 10.00?
l. Put it in the poor box
2. Donate it to a crisis pregnancy center
3. Donate it to Priests for Life
4. Donate it to the Susan B. Anthony List (Works to elect Pro-Life Folks)
5. Donate it to Catholic Relief Services
6. Buy some Mystic Monk Coffee – help the good monks and Fr. Z. Enjoy the coffee, it’s swell. [Couldn’t have said it better myself!]

This post was HILARIOUS! I’ve been away from the blog for weeks and I was so glum I didn’t even realize that I really *needed* some humor today. This one caught me off guard and I laughed so hard at the post and your comments that I couldn’t even read it aloud to the rest of the family.

They are to put it mildly endemic in the American South. When hubby and I were first married we lived in a cheap fleabag apartment in a lousy neighborhood. I walked in the kitchen one night and turned on the light and thought, “I didn’t know we had brown linoleum in here.”

Eeeeewwwwwww . . . . I’m so inured to them that poor Gregor Samsa’s experience didn’t gross me out as much as it was intended to. Didn’t want to eat apples for awhile though . . . .

I read about this in the NY Daily News last week.
And I’m not even going to look at the cockroach picture!
Valentine’s Day is hard enough to endure without looking at some icky bug!
(OK, end of rant….)

This post transported me back in time to our long family visit to Peru, as well. I discovered the importance of getting ALL the garbage out DAILY because one night, I awoke to a very light but persistent tap-tap-tapping on the bedroom door. To my horror, my husband explained that it was the sound of the shells of the (huge) cockroaches bumping against the door as they tried to get under it (we’re talking at least ½” clearance, too!). They had already feasted on the kitchen scraps and were looking for more! It’s a sound I’ll never forget.

My appreciation for garbage removal service and the men who do it soared from that day.

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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z

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- Pius XI

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

- 2 Chronicles 7:14 RSV

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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."

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"Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also in interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ."

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.
— C. S. Lewis

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"Latin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned, not because it is unsuitable for the new requirements of progress, but because the new men will not be suitable for it. When the age of demagogues and charlatans begins, a language like Latin will no longer be useful, and any oaf will be able to give a speech in public and talk in such a way that he will not be kicked off the stage. The secret to this will consist in the fact that, by making use of words that are general, elusive, and sound good, he will be able to speak for an hour without saying anything. With Latin, this is impossible."

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Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
be in no wise troubled by attack from her
foes.
O God, who by sin art offended and by
penance pacified, mercifully regard the
prayers of Thy people making supplication
unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of
Thine anger which we deserve for our sins.
Almighty and Everlasting God, in
whose Hand are the power and the
government of every realm: look down upon
and help the Christian people that the heathen
nations who trust in the fierceness of their
own might may be crushed by the power of
thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world
without end. R. Amen.

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Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

For your consideration…

"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

More food for thought:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Francis Card. George

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"It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive."

Charles Pierre PéguyNotre Patrie, 1905

"If I ought to write the truth, I am of the mind that I ought to flee all meetings of bishops, because I have never seen any happy or satisfactory outcome to any council, nor one that has deterred evils more than it has occasioned their acceptance and growth."

St. Gregory Nazianzus
ep. 131 - AD 382

“We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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